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Timothy Tate Nevaquaya loves sharing his Comanche art and music with non-Natives, but he wishes such cultural interaction could have happened much sooner.

Centuries earlier, in fact.

“Had the foreign invaders tried to understand our ways, things could have been so much better,” Nevaquaya said Tuesday during the 35th annual Sovereignty Symposium.

“They did not know what they were suppressing. They were cutting themselves off from something that had a very powerful meaning, a spiritual meaning,” Nevaquaya said.

“Thank God it has changed for the better.”

Nevaquaya served as a workshop panelist during the symposium, which is held every year in Oklahoma City as a forum for the exchange of ideas in a scholarly, non-adversarial environment. Speakers include tribal leaders and statewide elected officials, and workshops often focus on the contributions of tribes and tribal citizens to the economic and cultural development of the state.

Nevaquaya is an artist and flautist who divides his time between Tulsa and Apache and performs on the wooden flute during life events such as weddings, birthdays and memorial services. About 20 years ago, a non-Native friend asked him to take his flute to the hospital in Lawton so the friend could hear his music in his final hours. The family also invited him to play during the funeral.

‘Helps to heal the soul’

Native flute music, he said, “really helps to heal the soul. The non-Natives have really taken to it. It’s really a very beautiful thing that’s taking place now.”

Nevaquaya said Friday that if given more time as a panelist, he would have shared more of his personal thoughts about the power of culture to bring people together.

“Man has cheated himself out of some great opportunities,” he said. “Every race on this earth had gifts that were beneficial for everyone. We all have the same Creator.”

Mankind fails to live in peace when the acquisition of land and possessions takes center stage, Nevaquaya said.

“Our personal desires are uncontrolled, and that’s when dominance begins to take place,” he said.

“When the foreigners came, they were struck by the beauty of the land, and the obstacle was the people who were already here. They did not take time to understand them. Had they just stopped for a moment, they could have learned what they had: the medicine, the culture, the arts.”

After the workshop, Nevaquaya led a flute circle, inviting symposium participants to share their flute music and anything they had on their minds. His youngest brother, Calvert Nevaquaya, who lives in Norman, drew enthusiastic applause after playing a song that imitated bird sounds on a small, high-pitched flute.

Timothy and Calvert and their three brothers learned how to make flutes from their father, Doc Tate Nevaquaya, who was instrumental in the revival of Native flute music starting in 1969.

The crafting was taught to him, Calvert Nevaquaya said, but his songs are his own compositions.

‘In awe of his music’

“When I was growing up, I would take one of my dad’s flutes and go off and hide,” Calvert Nevaquaya said. “I heard Comanche hymn songs or powwow songs growing up. And we lived down the road from the Apache and we would hear them sing. I began to mimic the songs with my flute.

“And I grew up hearing my father’s songs and was in awe of his music. I believe my dad played the most traditional music you will ever hear.”

Calvert Nevaquaya said he had not previously participated in a flute circle.

“To me that was something new, and it almost felt like a therapy session for some people,” he said. “The instrument brings out people’s emotions. It brings a certain kind of peace.”

Calvert Nevaquaya is fully immersed in the culture as an acrylic painter, sculptor, musician and powwow dancer. He said about half the people who buy his art are non-Native.

“For me to sell my work to other races, to me it’s an honor, that they want to hang it in their homes,” he said.

Several years ago, Tate Nevaquaya was invited by the Comanche Nation to teach flute-making to a men’s group.

“I wanted them to know that this was their inheritance, that it could be passed down to the next generation, and that this instrument would be good for your soul, to help you overcome certain difficulties during your lifetime,” he said.

Traditionally, only the men played the flute.

“The people were very strict,” Tate Nevaquaya said.

“They believed that if a woman played it, it would cause a bad omen to come upon the tribes. A lot has changed. A lot of non-Native women play the flute today. I have created instruments for them.”

His ancestors played flute music to women they liked as part of a courtship ritual, Tate Nevaquaya said, “so it was instrumental in the posterity of the tribe.”

Cleveland County residents have several options for enjoying Native art, Tate Nevaquaya said, including the Jacobson House Native Art Center and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman. In Oklahoma City, good examples of Native art are at First Americans Museum, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the Red Earth Inc. Museum and Exhibit C, he said.

Both men sell their art through their Facebook accounts.

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